CentOS Linux 8 Reaches End-Of-Life

[You-]

I don't think anyone can be blamed for not knowing - not everyone has their finger on tech news, especially in the years of covid.

In the end I moved my systems to centos stream. I expect this to be almost exactly how I used to use Centos, but better (no support gaps when new point releases are made).

If you are unsure what to use, RHEL is now free up to 16 systems so that is probably best bet.

From the new upstarts, Alma and Rocky seem to be pretty identical but Alma has support of the types of linode etc and Rocky seem to be a bit too eager to pick fights (first with Alma, then with Centos - presumably all for marketing) for my liking.

[MadeUpName]

I managed to move my DNS/DHCP server to Stream 9 with out re-installing or to much phaff. I had migrated that machine to Centos after the Fedora server Bind packages went south after the upgrade to 34. Then shortly after that RH announced they were pulling the rug on Centos 8.

For my desktop I have to dual boot to Centos 8 in order to use the (^*%#%@** AMDGPU-Pro drivers in order to do serious graphics work. Unfortunately they are tied to exactly one version of the kernel and if I touch that in any way I have to re install the whole thing from scratch which is a multi-day process. If I uninstall the *(*&*^&$^%&^( AMDGPU-Pro drivers then I am left with no graphics what so ever because the (*^&&$$#^* AMDGPU-Pro drivers don't clean up after them selves when you uninstall.

I think the the plan for now is to wait to see if MESA 22 brings working Fedora openCL drivers allowing me to run real graphics applications with out rebooting. That would be the 'A' answer. If MESA 22 turns out to be a bust then I don't know WTF I am going to do. Redhat is really chaffing my hide with this move.

[cjcox]

Just saying (ducks under desk), but Microsoft Defender doesn't understand what to do when installed on either Rocky or AlmaLinux. So, this may delay your decision. It runs, just can't analyze (incorrectly) the status of the software installed on your host.

[mSparks]

Already on oracle linux 8.5, had a good run with centos, shame they eol'd it.

[chithanh]

Red Hat has been offering free RHEL licenses to developers and those with small deployments.

If you are unsure what to use, RHEL is now free up to 16 systems so that is probably best bet.

As ServeTheHome pointed out when this was originally announced, that is largely a non-starter. Even modestly sized home labs will quickly run into this limitation. Plus you have to keep track of your 16 subscribed installations which is additional work for no gain. And if you set up a new instance, have to weigh whether to consume one of your licenses for it or use another distro - then why bother with Red Hat Developer program at all? Rather use the other distro all of the time.

https://www.servethehome.com/ibm-red-hat-attempts-migrating-centos-users-to-rhel-subscriptions/

[You-]

As ServeTheHome pointed out when this was originally announced, that is largely a non-starter. Even modestly sized home labs will quickly run into this limitation. Plus you have to keep track of your 16 subscribed installations which is additional work for no gain. And if you set up a new instance, have to weigh whether to consume one of your licenses for it or use another distro - then why bother with Red Hat Developer program at all? Rather use the other distro all of the time.

https://www.servethehome.com/ibm-red...subscriptions/

Depends on your use case. I only have 2 active VMs. Not everyone needs more than 16. Though I have chosen to go with Centos Stream because it seems to do what I need.

[zog6]

I have moved to Rocky Linux from Centos, with zero issues. As far as I am concerned, it is the way forward (mostly rebuilding old Centos 6 VMs as Rocky 8 ).

https://rockylinux.org/

I have used the migrate2rocky script to migrate the one Centos 8 server I had to Rocky Linux, with zero issues:

https://github.com/rocky-linux/rocky-tools/tree/main/migrate2rocky

[lethalwp]

Depends on your use case. I only have 2 active VMs. Not everyone needs more than 16. Though I have chosen to go with Centos Stream because it seems to do what I need.

That's what i thought too when i migrated my work laptop from C8 to C9Stream manually, seems to have what i need. And it wasn't troublefree.

Anyway, that's where i found out they deactivated the libvirt/qemu "SPICE" protocol, which i use daily with my windows VM.

The only reason: it was deprecated and won't have support RHEL9, i learned this the hard way. How is this kind of thing community driven i thought comminuty would just --keep-the-most-already-included-options-enabled??

Luckily, my main workstation is in fedora and still has the SPICE support, but i'll stick to rocky for my servers.

I still don't understand the point of Stream with forever changing packages, broken for months! before finally have a fix or update. Chatted with a developer, it should stabilise when RHEL9 will enter freezing stage. Myeah... My only advice so far: Do not use C9Stream at the moment! it's pure hidden alpha, unless you know what you are doing.

[You-]

Yeah, I am not planning to put centos stream 9 in production yet. It isnt final yet, more of a beta/release candidate stage, with some bugs that need to eb fixed.

I didnt know SPICE was deprecated as I only just installed Centos Stream 9 this weekend. (Other installs are of Stream 8). Have they replaced it with anything?

I get how the process works and once RHEL is released, Centos stream 9 should always be stable as a production release, but with hoefully newer but just as stable updates.